


enemy of my enemy

by beeclaws



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Relationships, Anger, Body Horror, Complicated Relationships, Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Relationship, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Injury Recovery, M/M, Pre-The Unknowing (The Magnus Archives), Revenge, Season/Series 03, Self-Destruction, Trauma, both darker than i usually go for and somehow the usual amount of soft & self-indulgent?, suicidal thoughts (wrt to tim's canon pre-unknowing mindset), vomiting mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:28:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26630647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeclaws/pseuds/beeclaws
Summary: Jon comes back from his time with the Circus a little worse for wear. Tim has some feelings about that.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker
Comments: 88
Kudos: 506





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't want to overstate the body horror/graphic injury elements of this, but also the joke title for this fic was "Jon gets flayed just like a little bit" so......caution, perhaps. This is about the aftermath of Jon's kidnapping if Nikola had been just a liiiittle bit more impatient to get the show on the road

Tim’s on his approximately sixth reread of the useless statement they got last week, trying to drag some facts out of the endless ums, ahs and pointless digressions, when a door that shouldn't have been there opens and out tumbles Jon, skinny and shaking and - _jesus._

Basira swears very quietly, Melanie lets out a kind of disgusted yelp and starts fumbling for her phone, and Tim - Tim can’t move.

Jon is holding his left arm stiffly away from him, bent oddly like he’s leading some invisible creature back with him. Everything from wrist to elbow is a sickly cherry red. His whole forearm has been neatly, precisely stripped of skin. Bile is rising in Tim’s throat but he can’t move, can’t even sit up.

Jon glances frantically back at the door just as it’s closing - and in the light it emits Tim hears something both like and utterly unlike music, a pattern made of pure discordance, wrongs piled on top of wrongs until they sing. It’s a song Tim remembers, one that twists every sense, but it’s barely a footnote in his thoughts right now. 

“Right,” Jon says, and the room falls silent. Basira had been approaching Jon with her hands raised, Melanie had just got her phone to her ear and Tim could just make out a tinny operator asking about the nature of their emergency, but for a moment everything stills. 

“Right,” Jon says again, pale and trembling and - angry, Tim realises. As angry as he’s ever seen him. “ _Elias,_ ” Jon spits out, takes one step forward and crumples onto the ground. 

Everyone but Tim splutters back into motion. “Jon,” Basira says, kneeling beside him. “What happened? Where have you been?”

Jon lets out something that might have been a laugh if it weren’t half-strangled by shock and agony. “The - the Circus,” he answers, and then Tim isn’t quite a person inside of a body anymore. There’s curls of wire where his thoughts should be. Layers of static and dust lie between Tim and anything he might do or even think next. 

Jon grits his teeth and uses his one good arm to push himself up onto his knees. “That useless-” He cuts himself off with a groan. “How long has it been?”

Basira bites back her own stream of questions to answer him. “We last saw you about a month ago.”

Jon takes a deep ragged breath. “I’m going to kill Elias,” he says, seemingly undeterred by the fact that he still can’t stand up.

“No,” Melanie says, putting the phone down. “ _I’m_ going to kill Elias. You’re going to get in the ambulance currently speeding our way.”

Melanie is deliberately not looking at Jon’s arm, and Tim wishes he could do the same. In the haze his head has become, his attention has drifted back over to the most horrible thing in the room, that shining stretch of nothing where skin should be. It makes the skin on his hand look out of place, like an ill-fitting glove. Some heinous part of Tim’s mind, curious and analytical even when the only logical thing would be to run and never stop, is wondering how they did it; if they peeled the skin in spirals the way people peel apples, competing to see who could get the longest strip without it breaking. 

“Tim,” Basira is calling. “Help me get him up the stairs.”

Jon, at last, seems to realise that Tim is in the room, and flicks his eyes around frantically until they find each other. Tim is still frozen solid, lent back in his desk chair in a parody of relaxation. Jon takes short, shallow breaths, his eyes searching Tim’s face for...something, anything. Something to cling to the way he clung to that tape recorder down in the tunnels. Tim sees the moment when he remembers his rage, remembers Elias, and that anger centres and animates him at once, prompts him to start cooperating with Basira’s attempts to pull him upright. Tim watches it happen and feels the ghost of that rage flare in his own chest.

“ _Tim_ ,” Basira calls again. There’s a prickle in the back of Tim’s throat, and that’s all the warning he gets before he’s retching into the bin under his desk.

The room seems quieter than should be possible, once Melanie and Basira have gotten Jon out. Tim can hear the buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead. He feels like the only person left in the world. 

Tim knows he needs to move. The stronger the urge gets, the less possible it seems. His neck is aching where he's still half bent over in his chair, and sharp pinpricks of pain are flooding through this foot. He needs to _move._

The fog in his head eventually clears enough to remember that he's lived through this before. He was nearly late to his brother's funeral because he'd frozen solid while attempting to tie his tie, staring at a collection of colours and shapes in the mirror, hands clutching fabric he couldn't process as belonging to him. 

The instinct was to yell, mentally at least. To tell himself there was nothing stopping him from moving his own body. But Tim had never once clawed his way back until he let the anger die down and convinced himself to focus on the smallest movement for as long as it took. 

Long minutes pass, and Tim manages to move his finger. He flexes his hand open and closed, open and closed, because if he stops he has no idea when he'll be able to move again. 

_The bin_ , he thinks eventually. He's gotten used to spending most of his time in a basement office with no real ventilation, enough to know that leaving the bin there with its current contents would make the place borderline uninhabitable for hours. That doesn’t matter, of course - so absurdly doesn’t matter in their current circumstances that it summons up the echo of Jon’s strangled laughter - but it’s something to do, some movement to make while he still can, so Tim twists the top of the bin liner round to close it, then lifts it out and heads outside.

The cold stings at him, making him uncomfortably aware of every inch of skin on display. It's definitely jacket weather, and his is hanging uselessly on the back of his chair. He wonders how different cold would feel with no skin to shield you from it. He wonders what on earth Melanie and Basira said to the paramedics. 

_None of this matters,_ Tim thinks as he sinks down against the wall. He buries his face in his arms, then has to move away immediately as his head fills with the image of that neat bloody line perfectly following the curvature of Jon's wrist. 

A few hours later, Martin finds him, and Tim gives his first statement. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woof, this au's been living in my head rent-free for too long and I'm v excited to get it out there. Barring Circumstances, I'm planning to have the rest of the chapters up within a week
> 
> Comments very much appreciated! I am also reachable [here](https://karliahs.tumblr.com/) and [here](https://twitter.com/entageweorc)


	2. Chapter 2

"How is he?" Tim asks, and looks away while Martin visibly processes his surprise. 

"He's…I mean, about how you'd expect?" Martin says helplessly. "I don't think he's sleeping much but that's…hospitals, you know?" 

Tim nods, even though he doesn't know, really. He's never lost anyone with enough warning to have sat by their hospital bed. "Is he still after Elias' blood?" 

Martin darkens. "About the same level as the rest of us, now. So, yes." Martin sighs and tugs anxiously at one of his braids. "Look, Tim, I know you want information about - about the Unknowing, and the Circus, but Jon's…fragile, and you two haven't exactly been the best of friends lately, and-" 

"Martin, I won't-" _Hurt him,_ Tim wants to finish, but how does he know that, really? A year ago he'd have said he'd never hurt Jon. A month ago he might have said Jon got what he deserved. Whatever regulating factor lets you know what you'll feel and think in the next week, the next minute, lets you know things like whether you'd try and wreak further harm on your maimed coworker - for suspecting Tim when they'd been suffering from the same wounds? For surviving the Circus when Danny didn't? - Tim lost it a while ago. 

"I'm not going there to give him a black eye," Tim says instead. 

"Of course, yeah," Martin agrees, though there's a relief he can't fully disguise. 

An awkward silence falls. Martin doesn't seem to know how to act around Tim, without the vitriol of the past few months or the deliberate charisma of the past few years. Tim isn't sure he knows either. "Look, just give him the tape," Tim says eventually. "If he wants to see me, I'll come."

"He'll want to see you," Martin says, though he doesn't sound happy about it. 

"Thought this is what you wanted," Tim jokes, but with bite. "Me and Jon, talking, patching things up."

"Go easy, alright?" Martin says, instead of answering. "I'll be telling Jon the same thing."

Tim gets a text from Martin the next day, telling him the visiting hours. Tim can’t remember the last time they had an interaction that didn’t centre around fear. Martin was afraid Tim would lash out at Jon. Tim was afraid he’d see that wound and be unmade again, one foot in the past, paralysed and knowing the reason is his own cowardice. He doesn’t know what Jon’s afraid of - it’s been a while since he cared enough to consider it.

Jon looks up eagerly when Tim comes in. He’d been expecting exhaustion, and there are deep dark circles under Jon’s eyes, but apart from that he looks...wired. He looks like he had during the three double espressos incident of 2013. If it weren’t for the arm covered in bandages and the unforgettable sight of what lay beneath them, Tim could almost believe Jon had nothing worse going on than lack of sleep and caffeine jitters.

“Thank you for coming,” Jon says, in a determinedly neutral tone that makes Tim think he’s been rehearsing this ever since he learned Tim wanted to visit. Tim wants, distantly, to be angry about that - at being handled by someone who’d proven himself the most erratic and unreliable of all of them, at having some kind of care shown for Tim’s feelings months after it would have made a difference. Instead, he just feels hollow. 

"It's fine,” Tim answers. “Just had to convince Martin I wasn't here to kill you first."

Jon gives a tiny smile. “He has been rather...determined to personally stand between me and all the world's horrors.” He frowns down at the bedsheets. Tim notices that he’s sitting up without leaning back against the bed, a subtle tension thrumming through him. “How is everyone else?” he asks.

Tim shrugs, wondering if that question should make him angry, too. _Who are you today, Tim? Who should be afraid of you?_ “At this point, you can divide the Archives between team ‘trying to kill Elias’ and team ‘trying to stop the other team from killing Elias.’”

Jon darkens, and visibly pushes down whatever emotion that name inspires in him. “Which side are you on?”

“I've got things I need dead more than him."

The silence between them turns grave. Tim feels his attention do the equivalent of trying to get up and run out of the room; he finds himself thinking, absurdly, that he's surprised Jon's in a private room rather than an open ward, wondering if there were perks to having an injury disturbing enough that you'd terrify the other patients just by being there. _You're the one who wanted answers_ , Tim thinks, a flash of his old anger returning. _You're the one who asked for this._

"I…I'm aware that you need information," Jon starts, in that careful rehearsed tone. "And...and if you would have any use for my condolences, please know that you have them. Tenfold."

Tim is so far from the part of him who could understand that, feel it, know what it means. _Just stand there and do nothing, then,_ a mean little voice in his head says. _That’s what you’re best at, after all._ There's an ache deep in his throat, and he takes another step towards the bed just to prove to himself that he still can. 

Jon seems to interpret this as impatience. "Right," he says, straightening his glasses. "I…I'm not certain how much the others have told you. The…the Circus is preparing to attempt a ritual to alter the world more to their liking. They are…camped out in a wax museum, though I don’t know where. That's where I was - that is, where they were-" Jon clears his throat, tugging at the neck of his hospital gown. "The ritual, the Unknowing, it…they need-" He swallows, chest rising and falling in disjointed jolts. 

"Slow down," Tim offers, but it comes out more like a reprimand. Jon stammers, trying to resume, and Tim suddenly can't bear to be the thing causing him more pain. "I meant that you don't have to rush through it. Just…take your time."

Jon gives him a cautious look, meeting his eyes for the first time since he started his explanation, as though Tim’s handed him a present and he wants to make absolutely certain it isn’t about to explode. 

Tim wonders when, exactly, he became someone who offers kindness and is met with suspicion. It would be easy to blame Jon; twisted, paranoid Jon who saw enemies everywhere he looked. But Martin had given him that same look when he’d said he wanted to see Jon, and Tim hadn’t been surprised. He hadn’t thought it an outsize reaction, for sweet-natured Martin to assume he’d be going to someone’s hospital bed to cause them more distress. 

Is that who he’s made himself into, in the miserable months since Prentiss? Someone who no one expects to be kind? Worse, he isn’t sure if this part of him is really new, whether what he’s undergoing is a change or a revelation - isn’t sure if Danny and Sasha, the real Sasha, would struggle to recognise the person he’s becoming compared with the person they’d known. 

Tim forces himself to speak again. "I'm not just going to forget about everything that happened after Prentiss, after Sasha." It isn't as satisfying as it used to be, that Jon still flinches when he says her name. “But I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to make this worse.”

Jon processes that, silent and still thrumming with some strange energy. Tim thought saying it out loud would make it easier to believe himself - instead, he realises there’s more to it than not wanting to hurt Jon. When he’d looked at that flesh-stripped arm, there’d been a shard of something buried deep in his chest, unnoticed beneath the more obvious unmooring of his senses. Solidarity, maybe, or a more vicious version of it. Greed for an ally, for someone, anyone, who might understand how badly he needs to hurt these specific monsters. 

“Look,” Tim says, voice low and unable to contain the breadth of his rage. “Just - I need the next thing that dies to be one of them. Are you with me on that?”

“Yes,” Jon answers, blinking like Tim is finally talking sense. “ _Yes,_ ” he says again, small and fervent. 

Jon’s never been as good at putting up a front as he thinks he is - or maybe Tim was just good at seeing through it, since he spent a lot of time playing a role too. Jon’s hollow-eyed, looking smaller than he is in the endless white of the hospital around him, and his jitters are starting to look more like trembling. 

It should be ridiculous, to see this man as a valuable ally in a fight against impossible monsters, monsters that stole people away as easily as breathing. It should be, but somehow Tim can feel Jon’s anger just as he had back in the Archives; a living, burning thing, the sibling of his own fury. 

“Good,” Tim says, striding over and taking a seat by the bed. “So take your time, and tell me what you know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the wonderful feedback on chapter 1!! Getting to see your thoughts and excitement is such a balm to my stressed lil heart
> 
> Chapter 3 should be up over the weekend!


	3. Chapter 3

Tim ends up accompanying Jon on his international adventures partly because of how much Elias clearly disapproves of the idea. Jon isn’t exactly thrilled either, because that voice in his head telling him he’s better off doing things on his own apparently never quits. 

“I thought you were taking this seriously,” Tim says, after they’ve gone round in circles enough times for him to get a little mean.

“I - what?” Jon objects. “In - in what way am I not-”

“You know, the thing where we were gonna make the Circus pay? Ring any bells?”

“Yes, of-”

“I don’t know about you, boss, but I don’t really see that happening if our plan is to send one injured bloke with a kidnapping record on an international spooky sight-seeing tour without any back-up.”

Jon pauses for a long time, seemingly unsure which part of that sentence to object to first. Tim hopes Jon will stay baffled long enough that he won’t have to explain his real reasons for wanting to come - that the thought of being left alone at the Archives without Jon is disturbing in a way he doesn’t want to contemplate. Jon, for all his faults - and Tim has a pretty comprehensive list of them in mind at this point - is reassuringly real. The bandages on his arm still make Tim feel dizzy and untethered half the time, but they also remind him that he’s standing beside someone marked as prey by the thing he loathes more than anything else. 

Tim’s absolutely not going to say any of _that_ out loud, so instead he gives Jon the old Stoker grin. “Besides, I’m already packed,” he adds cheerily, and a few days later he finds himself in a cheap American hotel room with his boss, trying and failing to take a nap. 

“I did some googling,” Tim announces, when Jon’s shuffling makes it clear he definitely isn’t sleeping.

“Oh?” Jon perks up, clearly hoping for information on their futile trailing after Gertrude and co. 

“Paracetamol’s called Tylenol here.”

Jon sighs and flops back down onto the bed. “I’m _fine,_ Tim.”

“Sure,” says Tim, and lets it rest for about five seconds. “The doctors told you what to look out for, right? For signs of infection?”

Jon sighs deeper. “It’s jetlag. Jetlag and stress, that’s all. You don’t have to - _mollycoddle._ ”

Tim snickers despite himself, and Jon buries his face deeper in the disconcertingly yellow pillow. His gaze drifts to Jon’s bandaged arm - he only ever removed and replaced them in the privacy of the hotel bathroom, and Tim supposes that’s...good, since even the bandages make something in his stomach flip. It’s such a long expanse to be covered over, marked out as wounded; you don’t realise how much you have until someone or something starts chipping it away. 

“It’s really not infected,” Jon says, and Tim realises he’s emerged from his pillow-shield and is eyeing Tim with something like concern. He’s no longer sure how long he’s been lying there, staring at that long stretch of bandages, remembering what had lain beneath it. Maybe that’s why he’s been half-hoping to catch a glimpse of the injury now, to have something to replace that memory of Jon barely-coherent with agony, everything below the elbow red and glistening-

“Tim?”

Tim comes back to himself again. Carefully, deliberately, he flexes his hand open and shut, open and shut. Not frozen then. Just...not quite anchored.

“Yep, still here,” Tim says, trying for flippant. Jon is still frowning, eyes flicking to his flexing hand like he’s wondering if he should pretend he isn’t seeing it. Tim opens his mouth to say something reassuring, some joke to put him off further, and finds himself asking instead: “What did it feel like? When they did it?”

Jon’s frown turns a little more thoughtful. Tim recognises, distantly, that this is the point when he should back off and apologise for even asking. Instead, he watches as Jon searches for the words to explain it.

“I have never been so...excruciatingly present.” Jon’s gaze is hovering just over Tim’s shoulder rather than looking him in the face, which doesn’t help with Tim’s feeling that he’s floating outside of his own body. “I didn’t know that it was possible to be so...entirely in a moment; completely, undeniably _there_ , being…”

Jon trails off, looking a little ill. Tim sees, again, the moment where he should apologise. You don’t go around asking your coworkers how it feels to be tortured, Tim knows that - but he also still can’t quite believe he’s living in a world where his coworkers are going around having parts of them ripped away, leaving nothing but pooling blood and naked sinew, and compared to that wrong, any wrongs Tim adds to it just seem like...nothing. Nothing he does makes a difference anymore.

“Like an anchor,” Tim forces himself to say. “The world’s worst anchor.”

Tim hears his own words a second after the sensation of speaking them. The flexing of his hand is starting to feel like another thing that’s happening _to_ him, not anything he’s doing, so with great effort he switches to drumming his fingers against his palm. 

Jon hums agreement, moving to sit on the side of the bed, legs dangling over. “Is there…” Jon starts, a careful tone to his voice that suggests he doesn’t quite know where he’s going, “Could I - can I help, at all, when you’re…” He gestures towards Tim, who has apparently been drifting more visibly than he’d previously thought.

Tim gives a minuscule shrug. “Can you turn back time?” 

“I...wouldn’t rule it out these days,” Jon mutters, but Tim knows that look on his face all the way back from Research: he’s not going to let this go. Sure enough: “If, as you say, we’re...taking this seriously,” Jon starts, and Tim is already rolling his eyes. “Then it’s useful, tactically,” Jon continues, pushing on more determinedly in the face of Tim’s exasperation, “for me to...know how to help you. To be of help to you.”

Tim looks over at him, all stubborn pride at having figured out how to use Tim’s own argument against him. Tim silently raises his eyebrows. 

“I’m serious, Tim,” Jon insists.

Tim tries to raise his eyebrows even more, discovers he’s at maximum capacity, and settles for wiggling them instead. Jon huffs something like a laugh, shaking his head, and it’s a tiny fraction of what they used to be, but god, it makes something in Tim ache. There’s a prickling discomfort underneath the cheer, like the feeling flooding back into a limb after it had been numb for too long. He feels momentarily disloyal - he’s forgetting again, relaxing into the pleasures around him and forgetting the one thing he has to do - but there’s a reason that worked for so long. Tim’s weak to this - to bouncing off of someone strange and a little lovely, jabbing back and forth and knowing they’re both enjoying it.

So he answers, even though Jon seems like he might actually let it go. “Sometimes I get...stuck,” he says, and it sounds so small when he puts it like that. Like he’s a kid getting stuck in the toilets because he can’t quite get the latch to move. “But even if you could do anything, I can’t exactly tell you when it’s happening. Kind of the point.”

“No,” Jon muses, still so careful. “But you can tell me when it isn’t happening.”

Tim rolls his eyes. “And then? When you figure out it _is_ happening?”

“And then…” Jon gives a helpless gesture. “Whatever people...do, when they help each other?” He shrugs, gaze fixed firmly on the carpet. “I’m not exactly practiced at this.”

_I know,_ Tim should say. That he was there when Jon left them all to cope on their own, babbling into tape recorders while Tim...he lets his hand fall onto the bed beside him. “Yeah,” Tim says flatly. “Me neither.” 

They sit in relative silence for a moment, just the tinny sound of a TV in the room above. 

“We could text Martin and ask,” Tim says eventually, and Jon muffles a laugh in his hands. “But, you know. Data roaming and all.”

“Lord,” Jon says quietly. “Are we that hopeless?”

“Seems so.” Tim rubs a hand over his face. He’s fairly well jet-lagged himself, but something about the tactile feeling of that - the grit in his eyes, the feel of his hand rubbing at them - makes him realise he’s come back to himself a little. “You could try talking to me, next time,” he offers, blinking away vague impressions of light. “If you realise it’s happening, I mean. Just...about anything. Might help.”

In his peripheral vision, he sees Jon nodding solemnly, taking in this new task. 

They lapse into silence again and Tim...maybe he just wants to hold onto this feeling of being real and awake, because he finds himself breaking it. “Sorry I asked,” he says, still addressing the ceiling rather than looking at Jon directly. “About the arm.”

“It’s fine,” comes Jon’s immediate reply, and now he does look at Jon just to make sure he catches Tim’s skeptical eye-roll.

“No, honestly, it -” Jon lets out a sigh. “Even the, the hospital staff didn’t really want to acknowledge it. No one really wanted to see. And I don’t...blame them, of course.” He seems to shrink in on himself slightly, still off-kilter in some indefinable way, worsening every day since he left the Archives - _or you’re getting as paranoid as he was_. “But it’s...it’s as though I’m just...transporting some horror around, terrifying everyone I meet, and there’s nothing I can do to prevent it because it’s a part of me, or - the distressing absence of a part of me, I suppose.” He gives a shrug and a smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. 

“You don’t terrify me,” Tim says, and Jon meets his eyes for one long, intense second before he looks away again.

“But I remind you of-”

“Don’t.” Tim takes a breath and tries again, a little softer. “Don’t, alright? That’s not...just keep up your end of the deal.”

“Right,” Jon murmurs. “Right. The next thing that dies…”

Tim nods, holding Jon’s gaze, and even that small action feels like him, right there, right then, in his body. He watches Jon fiddle with the end of his bandages, and wonders if anyone really gets to choose their anchors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter: Soon
> 
> As always I cherish hearing your thoughts in comments or on [Tumblr](https://karliahs.tumblr.com)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to flag up a new content warning for this chapter: Tim's mindset pre-unknowing being potentially triggering for suicidal thoughts, no worse than canon but discussed in more detail

The room they share in Yarmouth is significantly smaller than any of the ones from their previous trip. There’s one double bed and not even an armchair to collapse into instead. Tim thinks he’d have joked about that once, teased Jon while scoping out his comfort level at the same time. 

“We both need the sleep,” Tim mutters instead, and lies down on the left side of the bed. Jon silently acquiesces and takes the right. 

The ceiling swirls above them, little raised patterns of white that are too close to worms for comfort. It makes Tim feel hollow, somehow, to remember when that was the biggest thing they had to worry about. When he’d stamp half a dozen white worms under his shoe and consider that a bad day, a bad omen. He hears Jon shift and senses the words coming before they arrive.

“Have you considered,” Jon says, slow and careful, “that Daisy might be right? That we should...let her go in alone?”

“Jon,” Tim replies, a low note of warning. 

“I’m _asking_ ,” Jon insists. “I’m asking for your thoughts on this.”

Tim sighs, and looks over at Jon specifically because he doesn’t want to, because he’s afraid of what he’ll see there. "I'm not letting them take anyone else."

Jon blinks slowly at him, like he's waiting for something. "Not even me?" 

Tim grabs a handful of fabric over Jon's shoulder and yanks, like he can physically shake some sense into him. The burst of anger dies as quickly as it had come, and then he’s just...holding. He lets his hand uncurl, and now he can feel the warmth of Jon's skin through his shirt. 

"Not you," Tim echoes, letting his hand rub gentle circles on Jon's arm. Keep moving, in case he freezes. Keep touching, in case a minute later, a minute into the unknowable future, he can't anymore. 

Jon lets his eyes flutter shut, like one hand touching his arm is enough to crumble him down to the core. Tim wonders when it last was that someone touched Jon without it being to create or worry at a wound. 

There’s a roaring in Tim’s head. He knows if he keeps moving his hand lower, he'll find the beginnings of brand new skin. He’s been waiting for so long, and now that it’s almost here all he can feel is bone-deep exhaustion. It occurs to him that a hand soothing Jon might be the last kind thing he does on this earth. 

"Even if we do stop it," Jon says, "what then? What happens next?" 

Tim studiously ignores the question behind this question - whether they'll live - and isn't sure who he's doing it for. "That's up to me, is it, _boss?"_ he asks, but there's no venom left in him. 

The corner of Jon's mouth tilts upwards ever so slightly. _The last person you'll ever make smile._ "As much as it's up to me, certainly," he answers, and Tim can see in his eyes that he isn't ready to let the question drop yet. The one they aren't voicing. 

Tim rolls onto his back again, leaving his hand resting against Jon's shoulder, caught up in each other's orbit. Even when Tim had almost managed to convince himself he hated Jon, he'd never really thought that would stop being there.

"If - if I do get a choice," Jon says, and the words come out unsteadily, but Tim's known him long enough to know that doesn't mean they aren't deeply felt, "I'm going to…to try and make sure there's an after. For you."

Tim swallows around the lump in his throat. _Don't make me apologise_ , he wants to say. _Don't make me say it._ "Thought we were agreed," he says instead, voice flat and empty. "The most important thing that happens tomorrow is the Circus finally taking some of the hurt it's dealt out."

"Yes," Jon answers immediately. "Yes-" 

"Kind of the only thing we've been agreeing on lately," Tim adds, with a little of that burning false lightness. _Take the warning, Jon. Let it rest._

"I'll-" Jon starts. "I have no intention of - of reneging on-" 

Tim shifts the hand still resting on Jon's shoulder and brushes over the fabric, smoothing it down, quieting him. It doesn't feel so much like a kindness this time. 

A moment's silence. Jon lets out a soft sigh that Tim feels more than hears. "Would it make any difference if I-" 

"No," Tim says, so that he doesn't have to hear what Jon was going to say next. Jon sinks even lower beneath his hand. Tim is so very tired. "Just - c'mere," he says, and Jon comes easily into his arms like they’ve done this a thousand times. His head rests on Tim's shoulder, and he exhales like Tim has taken a weight from his chest. 

_Now you're straight-forward_ , Tim wants to say. _Now you do what I ask._ He wants to ask if Jon remembers the time he fell asleep with his head resting on Tim's shoulder in a cab after work drinks. He wants to go all the way back to when Danny was alive and monsters weren't real, and he wants to meet Jon in a bar like a normal fucking person. 

It’s been months since he was this close to anyone. It might have even been Jon the last time, too; helping him walk down in the tunnels. How did they get from there to here? How-

“Tim?” Jon asks softly, pulling back to look him in the face, and it’s the loss of that warmth and pressure that makes Tim realise he’s started breathing in great, shuddering gasps. He screws his eyes shut and Jon reverses their positions, pulling Tim into his chest with unpracticed but fervent hands. His T-shirt is soft against Tim’s face; he hadn’t thought Jon would own anything so soft. 

Tim’s throat is burning, but as long as he keeps his eyes screwed shut then he isn’t crying. He isn’t crying on Jonathan Sims the night before they both-

“It’s alright, Tim,” Jon says, searching for words of comfort he only half believes himself. “It’s - whatever happens tomorrow, it can’t - we’re safe here.”

Tim laughs bitterly. “Nothing’s fucking safe.” 

Jon seems unable to decide between rubbing soothingly at his back and just holding on as tight as he can. Tim shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be giving into this. But there's a reason he lost so much time when he should have been searching for the thing that killed his brother. The Institute was full of potential answers, but it was also full of bright, lovely distractions. He's buried in the arms of one of them. 

Tim didn't used to think of that as weakness - but he didn't used to think there were worms that burrowed through your flesh, or creatures that took every true memory of your friend without you ever noticing, or monsters that played with skin, played with the fabric of who you were, because it was fun.

Tim doesn't know fucking anything, and maybe he never did, and now all that's left is to-

"What can I do, Tim?" Jon asks, and he sounds so honestly lost.

"Turn back time," Tim murmurs into his shirt. "Don't let go," he adds a moment later. 

“I won’t, I won’t.” Jon clutches him impossibly closer. Tim’s world narrows down into warmth and pressure. “Tim, we don’t - we don’t have to do this. _You_ don’t have to do this.”

The gentle vibration of his words is almost enough to distract Tim from the words themselves. He turns his head so he can speak un-muffled, and immediately misses the comfort of being closed in. “I do, Jon. I can’t…” Tim fumbles for the right words, wondering faintly if this is how Jon feels all the time, struggling to give voice to the unspeakable. “The worst thing in all of this, the worst thing would be if they hurt someone again while I’m just _standing there."_

Still not crying, not as long as his eyes are tight shut. He feels Jon hesitate, then push forward anyway. "Even if...Tim, even if you had moved, what could you have done?" 

Tim squeezes hard at Jon's side and isn't sure if he means it as a warning or a plea. 

"I'd never have met you," Jon says, so soft Tim isn't sure if he was meant to hear it. 

"Was just thinking before,” Tim replies, because he’s fucked up enough that he might as well keep going, “I wish I'd met you somewhere normal."

Jon’s hands still, and for a moment the rise and fall of his chest does too. It’s the closest thing to absolution Tim’s ever offered. He’s glad he can’t see Jon’s face, can’t see whatever shock or gratitude is playing out there. At some point, he made himself into someone who no one expects to be kind. He wonders, vaguely, whether it counts as forgiveness, to want someone to spend what might be their last night on earth forgiven.

“I have to go in there,” Tim says. He can hear the exhaustion in his own voice. “I have to try and stop them. Make them hurt. If...if that happens and we’re still alive, then…”

Then Tim keeps living in a world of monsters, a world that killed and mutilated the ones he loved most. Then he’ll have to be here to see when the Institute or its enemies finally tear them apart. Then he’ll keep living with a wildfire of rage deep in his chest. Live to be distracted again, to tease and push, to receive a soft litany of words when the past rises up and freezes him in place. Live to hold and be held. 

“Alright,” Jon says, as if he’s heard all the things Tim didn’t say. “Alright.”

Tim wonders if either of them actually believe it; that there's a world where they burn that place to the ground and then walk out of there hand in ash-streaked hand. That there's enough of him left to live the kind of life that could follow that. 

He thinks about the tape he snuck out of Jon’s office this morning, about Jon saying that he didn’t think he could trust people naturally anymore, so in the absence of that, he’d have to choose it. Tim doesn’t think he can hope naturally anymore; he can’t look into the future and see good things sprouting there. Maybe he could choose it, though. He could lie here in Jon’s scarred arms and choose to believe, just for a moment, that the things they do for each other matter as much as the things that are done to them.

And if he can keep that mangled shard of chosen hope buried somewhere deep down, beneath Jon’s sight, in case it all comes to fire in the end anyway - that might be the last kind thing Tim does, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catch me tenderly wrapping my jontim feelings in a hand-knitted blanket and leaving them on all of your doorsteps
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! If you enjoyed, it would mean so much if you could:  
> -leave a comment  
> -reblog on Tumblr - [post here](https://karliahs.tumblr.com/post/630515933545480193/fic-enemy-of-my-enemy)  
> If you do both of those things, you become the legal owner of my heart


End file.
